


Strange Humanity

by jeeps



Category: NSYNC
Genre: M/M, Wingfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2003-09-30
Updated: 2003-09-30
Packaged: 2017-10-03 06:34:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,384
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15206
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jeeps/pseuds/jeeps
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Lyrics from Tom Waits' <i>Big in Japan</i>.</p>
    </blockquote>





	Strange Humanity

**Author's Note:**

> Lyrics from Tom Waits' _Big in Japan_.

_I got the moon, I got the cheese  
I got the whole damn nation on its knees_

*

In the beginning, you took JC under your wing. You always realized what you were doing. He looked up to you. It was clear from the sparkle in his eyes and the small, embarrassed smiles he gave when you gently pushed him into trying new things. Maybe some of it was a plain old-fashioned crush, you don't know, but you remember feeling fiercely protective of him almost immediately. And you loved him almost immediately. Sometimes those two things tended to get cross-wired in your brain and you made mistakes. Like the first time you kissed him.

Everyone had just found out that the Club was being cancelled. It was officially your last season on the air, and there were a lot of mixed feelings going around. The younger kids were all flat-out devastated... you'd seen some of them crying into adult laps while large hands petted and consoled them. The older kids, you and your friends, were for the most part sadly accepting of the news. You were old enough and mature enough to know that things didn't last forever, certainly nothing in show business, and the years spent here had been some of the best times of your lives. But you were all still young enough to have big dreams and high hopes, and this was the opportunity to, perhaps, really become what you were Supposed To Be.

JC, however, hadn't taken the news well. You had been watching him silently through the slightly open door, which led to a cramped and softly lit office, for you didn't know how many minutes. Despite his best intentions, you'd still noticed him slip away from the sets but let him alone until concern overran discretion. He hadn't changed position since you'd found him. He was sitting sideways on a loveseat with his knees drawn up to his forehead, his arms clutched tightly around his stomach. His hair obscured his eyes, but that was okay, because you already knew.

"C?" He started a bit, lifted his head and watched as you pushed open the door and walked over to sit down next to him. "You alright?"

He shrugged. "My stomach hurts a little bit. Must be coming down with something. I guess." And he cast his eyes down at the floor, his flippancy faltering under your gaze.

You could see he'd just remembered that you knew. Confessions made long ago of getting sick every day before school. The dread pooling in his stomach, but he wouldn't say anything to his mother when she fussed over his sickly thinness. He didn't want her to start seeing him the way they did. She was his only haven, the only thing that gave him the strength to walk out the door every day. So he'd throw up in the bushes on the way and pray he didn't get caught.

"Tony," he said helplessly, pleading with you.

"I'm not going to..." You put your hand on his bent knee, shook it a little until he looked at you. "I'm your best friend, okay?"

He nodded, tears springing to his eyes. He didn't expect them and bit down on his thumb to try and stave them off.

He succeeded, and you both sat on the couch in silence for a long time, though you couldn't have said exactly how long. You'd kinda zeroed in on the sound of his breathing and the slight movements he made and the warmth under your hand still on his knee and the thoughts racing through your head. The thoughts had been there before, but now they were all piling up on top of each other in fast-forward.

"You don't have to go back, you know." You said it suddenly and with force. JC looked surprised by your tone, confused by your words.

"What—?"

"You don't even know, do you?" you cut him off. "Any one of us can go back to our normal lives. You _can't_. Because it'd be a fucking waste, C, you'd be throwing away this... gift. And I know you feel at home on stage, I _know_ it." You risked a glance at him. He looked so utterly blown away that you were talking this way to him that you tried to rein it in, softened your voice, but couldn't stop talking. "JC, you think it's on MMC that you feel at home, and in a way it is, but. You could be singing in an igloo for polar bears in Alaska and as long as the igloo had good acoustics you'd be just as happy there as you are here."

That's when you'd kissed him. It was abrupt and without context, and later you wouldn't be able to explain why except that it had something to do with the lock of hair that had fallen into his eye, which had welled up with tears again and spilled down his cheek. You'd just kissed him. It scared you and you could only think it must have scared him, and you found your hands sliding up his back to hold him to you. At first you thought your hands were shaking, but then you realized the sensation came from two hard nubs under your palms, something quivering underneath the skin that felt like fear or exhilaration.

He made a small, shocked sound in his throat before actually kissing you back. Fleetingly. Right before he shoved you away. Hard.

You pressed your lips together to quell the sound of instant regret and tasted salt. Probably from his tears and you couldn't believe you'd just kissed JC.

It was almost physically difficult to open your eyes and look at him. Then you nearly closed them again when the hurt shining off his face was almost too much to take. You didn't know what to say, because you didn't understand. You didn't understand the lack of anger or shock or fear or disgust. You didn't understand the pain.

"Tony. don't. don't patronize me. You're the only one who's never..."

Then he pushed himself off the couch as quickly as he could and left the room, and you felt it in your chest that he was now trying to hide his tears from you.

*

You've never quite been able to determine the color of JC's wings. You suppose they're white, but there's something else there, some holographic b-side that your eyes can't flip over. More than a predisposed pattern of feathers, they beat like impressions. Sometimes they beat against you and no matter whether it's in love or anger or excitement or peace it is the core of these things. It's so ridiculously intense you feel like writing a song about it. You have no idea what the lyrics would be.

*

What JC told you about his life before he came to Florida was this:

He remembers his birth mother, but not his father. He said she had big, beautiful wings that held him while she sang to him. Her voice was sweet and powerful, and JC can still see her against his eyelids when the song bursts out of his throat. JC said that one day she came home to their tiny, one-bedroom apartment and her wings were gone. She wouldn't let him look at her back, but she moved like she was in agony. That's when she said goodbye to him.

For a long time you'd thought this whole wing thing was just one of JC's weird metaphors.

After that JC spent a lot of time in houses with various adults who had no wings, which had hurt him to see and made him wonder if their wings had been taken away like his mother's. He mourned her terribly and cried himself to sleep at night when he began to forget the softsoft sensation of her feathers surrounding him, their exact colors, the way her voice carried over the beats they created. The song died in his throat. JC thinks he may have completely forgotten, at one point, that they had even existed, until Karen and Roy adopted him and Karen had wings of her own. But even then it took JC a while to allow her wings to touch him; their color was so different, their strange movements downright terrifying.

(You've known Karen Chasez long enough to be reasonably sure that here JC _is_ being metaphorical.)

*

You feel somehow proud to have witnessed the emergence of JC's wings, like you had a part in it even though they broke out of _his_ skin. It's not like it's something you can brag to anyone about, so you don't know why you're so damn possessive. You figure, maybe, this is just what love is. You've loved him for so long that you can slide over his back and the wings curl around you in shuddering grace and JC makes involuntary gasps that come together like a melody and for a briefbrilliant moment the harmony spills out of you. The lyrics are still evasive.

*

"Tony, I just can't stand it here anymore."

You nodded and stared at your feet. You had known the risks of coming out here to LA, even known you couldn't expect not to fall into the traps, but somehow you still had. Or he had, but it was your fault anyway.

It wasn't like you had a martyr complex or anything — you're a pretty logical guy, when it comes down to it — but you were the one who dragged him out here, convinced stardom was waiting for you. Besides, you'd naively figured the City of Angels would be good for someone like JC. That he could be at home here.

You'd found it hard to look at JC recently. He always looked you in the eye without blame, sure, but the self-conscious flutterings of his wings always distracted you. You kept thinking they probably should have grown more by now and wondered if maybe JC shouldn't hide them away at night when you spooned up against him in the tentative routine you'd developed. You didn't really understand why he did that, anyway. It had been months, plenty of time for the ruptured skin around the place they had emerged to heal. Or maybe it had something to do with the air, there in LA, or the light. Your eyes flickered over to the yellowed, pealing windowsill and the plants attempting to reach up to the meager light that filtered into the alley the window faced. It was almost as if the sun's rays grazed the brown-edged leaves with disdain that it was forced to spare any of its brilliance for such hopelessness. None of your plants would grow there, either. Maybe JC's wings were like a plant.

You felt like such a fucking kid.

You shifted your eyes over his face a few times, then gritted your teeth and met his gaze. It held some combination of worry and hope, and it wasn't like you could ever be _that_ selfish.

"I know," you replied. Your smile was sad and disappointed and lost and a thousand other things that just meant you were going to miss him, but it was still a smile. JC returned it, relieved, and his wings shimmered.

You later wonder how you knew you couldn't go with him then.

*

He once sang for you when they were unsheathed. That's how you've come to think of them, when he lets them unfold from where they tuck underneath his shoulderblades — an unsheathing. Which makes them sound like a weapon; an unsettling description at first, but you did realize its accuracy soon enough. When he sang you were knocked out for hours, after all. The shadow of frantic worry strained into seconds to minutes to hours covered his face when you woke up, wings molting a few feathers in his agitation, and you were still weak but that made you laugh and laugh at him. He scowled most sincerely, then gripped your shoulder so that you could feel crescents being indented into your skin. You pulled him down and kissed him and told him he never had to worry about you. You would always be fine.

You had no reason to tell him of the deepdown ache in your bones that didn't fade for days afterwards.

You remember, a few years ago, JC and Justin writing together. It was a ballad, and they were pressed up against each other on the piano bench in your living room. Their arms crisscrossed as the notes in their heads moved in different directions, before falling into place almost accidentally.

You provided the background noise, puttering about the house, socked feet rasping against the hardwood as you did nothing of significance. You kept staring at them and feeling like doing something stupid. Like going over and running your hands through JC's hair, which would have been lame, and he probably wouldn't have noticed anyway. He has more than a tendency to get lost in his music.

You'd glanced once again at JC and Justin scrunched up together on the bench and suddenly their image was superimposed with a slightly grainy film of pseudo-documentary-style camera work, capturing two of 'NSync's stars at work, to be shown on MTV with the song they were writing dubbed over in its complete, CD-formatted glory.

Now, the image morphs to you and JC, and it's not a film, just a memory. Your fingers move over the smooth ivory keys, composing your own tune this time. This piano is older and smaller, a Chasez family heirloom kept in your master bedroom upstairs. JC is still, his head resting lightly against your shoulder, and he occasionally hums along with the parts he knows. From where you're sitting you can see one of the pictures of the two of you. It's the only one that's not a candid, taken in this very room by a photographer, a trusted mutual friend whom JC had asked to come. In it, JC's wings are suspended high over his arched back, and it contrasts sharply with the way they now rest against him, calm. You croon some tentative lyrics, and his lips press against your shoulder in gentle approval. There is no camera.


End file.
